Profile

Erik Voorhees is a businessman and entrepreneur who has been involved with, and even founded, several Bitcoin-related startups.

Over the course of his involvement in the crypto community, the Colorado native has launched Bitcoin-based companies like Coinapult and ShapeShift.io (of which he is the CEO). Moreover, he also served as the Director of Marketing for the popular New York-based exchange, BitInstant.

While Voorhees has had his name attached to several companies in recent years, he is often associated with the gambling site, Satoshi Dice.

Satoshi Dice opened for business in April of 2012 and quickly established itself as one of the most popular Bitcoin-based gambling sites. The startup reported $500,000 (USD) in profit, in 2012 alone.

Voorhees would end up selling his lucrative wagering site for 126,315 Bitcoins, an amount worth about $11.5 million (USD) the time of purchase.

Erik Voorhees very much embodies the entrepreneurial spirit that makes the crypto world such a fascinating place.

Quotable

“Bitcoin is absolutely the Wild West of finance, and thank goodness. It represents a whole legion of adventurers and entrepreneurs, of risk-takers, inventors, and problem solvers. It is the frontier. Huge amounts of wealth will be created and destroyed as this new landscape is mapped out.”

Fun Fact

Voorhees supports the Free State Project, a proposed political migration that hopes to move roughly 20,000 libertarians to single low population state. In doing so, the project hopes to make the selected destination a stronghold for libertarian ideas. In 2003, New Hampshire was chosen as the proposed landing spot for the FSP.

Check out other people making big waves in helping progress these incredible technologies in our series Moving the Chain, and for more awesome articles by Jacques Martin, check ’em out here! To learn more about Bitcoin, visit our guide page!